A construction or mechanics lien is a legal mechanism for contractors to protect themselves when dealing with contractees. A lien is a hold on real property such that an owner's title to the property becomes constrained. This constraint must be removed before the owner can claim clear title to the property. Because a contractor usually provides a service prior to actually getting paid for that service, a contractor needs to have some way to seek redress should a contractee withhold payment for whatever reason.
Most states in the United States have construction lien laws in place that protect contractors when performing work on the behalf of a contractee. These laws also provide protection for contractees as well. Most construction lien laws prescribe procedures intended to prevent disputes from occurring that may lead to liens on property in addition to actually placing and removing liens. Underlying these procedures are a series of legal forms that must be filled out and then filed with appropriate legal authorities. Many of the legal forms intended to prevent disputes are filled out periodically during a job and are usually a requirement for contractors to be paid by contractees. These forms, among other things, document that a project's finances are being properly managed and they document the physical progress of contracted work.
Today, most of the documentation mandated by construction lien laws is in the form of paper. These forms must be signed by contractors and contractees, many times in the presence of notary publics. Therefore, paper lien documents usually must be physically transported from one location to another, often by postal mail or courier, during the process of signing and filing. Consequently, this entire enterprise tends to be slow and costly; in fact, often it is the case that work continues on a project before all of the construction lien documentation has been brought up to date thus creating windows of vulnerability to the kind of litigation that construction lien laws were intended to alleviate in the first place.